They grew up alike, Mike an adoring shadow of his older brother. They climbed the same trees, hid in the branches of the plum while Maude shouted at them to come inside for lunch, and hugged their mother all around, their arms linking her waist, their faces smothered in the cool linens of her summer dresses. On the rare winter days of snow, when school was called off by a mere whitening on the roads, Sam and Mike filched a tray from Maude’s kitchen and sledded down the slope near the house, arriving at the bottom in a wet, cold heap of happiness. Mike was the one with the outward passion—he shouted, drummed his fists on the floor, threw his body around on the furniture, in moments of distress tore at the rugs like a puppy. Sam was quieter, more thoughtful, amazed by Mike’s antics, even more astounded that they brought results. But even then, very young, he understood that they each had their ways and their peculiarities, that these vagaries made them unique. Maude was a painter and was absorbed in the afternoons in her studio atop the house with huge daubs on canvases gleaming with colors splattered haphazardly to Sam, but perfectly understandable to Mike.
When the war had come three years ago in Europe, Mike, then only eighteen, chafed in the safe confines of Seattle. There was a war on, he would tell Sam, and they were doing nothing to contribute to justice. These were the words he used—truth, honesty, integrity, conviction—there were no shades of gray in Mike’s world, no place for guilt that could not be atoned for, no hiding from his own flaws.
Sam, more patient, had been content to wait for America to go into the war; he knew that the waiting would not be long, but not Mike. He had joined the American Field Service and taken ambulances out to the war front in France in 1940, and then, sometime the next year, he wrote to them to say that he was in India, training for a British Indian regiment. Times of war were forgiving; all Mike had needed was a sanction from the U.S. embassy in Paris and a nod from the India Office in London to join an Indian army without losing his American citizenship. Four months later, Second Lieutenant Michael Ridley joined the Rudrakot Rifles as an emergency commissioned officer. We are all pristinely white here—the Rifles are a British regiment, and we live unhappily across the road from the Rudrakot Lancers, an all-Indian regiment, right up to their commanding officer, who is, if you can believe it, some sort of prince. Do you remember reading about the struggle for freedom, Ma, Mike had written to Maude, well, it’s alive, well, and kicking here…though too slow for my liking. These Indians are too quiet a people, steadily persistent though, and I just don’t understand Gandhi’s nonviolence movement—whack the hell out of these sorry British bastards, I say, and they will leave India. Or better yet, refuse to engage in the war—after all, it is not an Indian war, but a British one. Why should Indian regiments, fighting on behalf of the British Raj, die in droves on war fronts like Egypt and Libya—poorly clad, ill equipped, shabbily trained, fighting an enemy they do not even recognize as their own?
This letter was written in February 1942, by which time Sam was already also on his way to India. For one month, Sam had tried to make contact with Mike, but his letters had been unanswered, his phone calls dropped by one of the myriad operators who would have linked him from his base camp in Assam to Rudrakot. The day before he left for Burma to find and rescue Marianne Westwood, he received Maude’s frantic letter. Mike was missing, considered AWOL from the army, which, like all armies, blew minor infractions out of proportion and labeled liars murderers. The Rudrakot Rifles had closed their files on him for now—the war was on, Burma had fallen, there was no time to search out errant officers. Find him, darling. I’m only grateful that you are in India already. But Sam had had to put his mother’s pleas away and go into Burma, and all through that journey with Marianne and Ken, he had seethed with the desire to be in Rudrakot.
The alarm on the bedside clock beeped for five minutes before its sound delved into Sam’s sleep-fogged brain. For a moment, he could not tell where he was. The white-washed expanse over his head, the fan hiccupping through its revolutions, the quiet around him at this time of the day bespoke almost all of civilized India. He had been in so many places over the last four days that this could be any one of them. And then he remembered his morning conversation with Raman, remembered meeting Mila, and an ache began to grow within his chest, for then he also recalled why he was here at Rudrakot. His shoulder had stiffened with the rest, the bones seemed solidified under his skin and Sam shrugged gently to loosen the hardness. His stomach rumbled, as though glad he was finally awake.
On the table beside his bed was a tray covered with a thin film of cloth. Sam lifted it and found a plate with a domed aluminum lid, a pot of tea in a Devon teapot, one cup and saucer, a fork and a knife clad in the folds of an ivory napkin, and, most incongruously, a wilted red rose laid alongside the plate. He was almost afraid of lifting the dome to see what lay underneath, for the aging of the rose told him that the tray had been by his bedside since shortly after he had fallen asleep. Two eggs from Pallavi’s chicken coop blinked their unbroken yolk eyes at him, the fat still runny around the edges, since it was too hot for the butter to congeal. There was also a slice of potted meat, decorated with a wilted sprig of coriander leaf. A toast rack also stood by the tray and two pieces of bread, now dry and flaky, disintegrated onto the table’s shiny surface. The tea was at room temperature, which was to say that it was not cold, but not as hot as it ought to be, and slivers of creamy milk and tea swirled from the spout into the teacup when Sam poured. He dusted his eggs with pepper and salt. Ever since he had come to India, Sam’s taste buds had blossomed under the care of the army cooks who with no finesse had fed spices into the dishes by the handful. In the beginning his stomach had revolted; a thin flame of heat had burned around the periphery of its lining until Sam could feel the throbbing shape and size of his stomach within his torso. That burning had finally settled into a dull ache, and then had miraculously vanished.
The eggs melted in Sam’s mouth. The toast broke into a thousand shattered pieces of baked dough and he sponged up every minute piece with his wetted forefinger. He even wiped the teacup out with his finger and held it, cup upended, over his mouth until the last drop of tea slid out onto his waiting tongue. Sam was still hungry. He walked over to his holdall, unzipped it, and rummaged around the sides for the two chocolate bars. Still sitting on the floor, he ate the chocolate, not slowly, not savoring it, but in a sudden rush of hunger.
Sam had chosen to awaken in the middle of the afternoon—his watch told him it was a little after one o’clock—because this was the time of rest and sleep in India and for what he wanted to do, there would be no prying eyes to encounter.
He went into the bathroom to brush his teeth and wash his face, and then came back to his holdall. He dug around the bottom of the bag and came up with a dhoti, a long piece of cloth, about five feet by three, muddied and browned beyond its woven-white color. Sam had dipped the dhoti in the river behind his barracks in Assam and then, without rinsing out the mud, had flung it on some bushes; it had dried in less than half an hour, the sun eagerly eating up all moisture in the cloth. He laid the dhoti on the floor, and then brought out a kurta, also dulled from its former color to look aged and worn, its sleeves torn and frayed at the edges where they would fall upon his wrists. Another piece of cloth, navy blue and white, he deposited near the dhoti and the kurta. And then Sam began to dress. He took off his pants and his shirt, folded them, and stuffed them under the mattress. He knotted the dhoti skirtlike around his waist. Bending over, Sam reached for the back of the dhoti, drew it up in front, over his crotch, and tucked the end into his waist. Then he ruffled the edges along his legs, pulling them down until his knees were covered.
The only mirror in his room was above the chest of drawers and Sam had to climb up on the bed to look at his efforts. The dhoti fit snugly around his waist and over his body. Mr. Gandhi’s loincloth, Sam thought, this is what it was, a piece of cloth woven around the body, easily washed, with no seams that would come unraveled, no stitches to pick up
or to lose. He donned his kurta, rolled up the sleeves above his elbow, and then tackled the blue-and-white turban cloth. Sam had watched peasants tie on turbans with a great deal of ease, with concentration and no mirror, at most a river’s reflection to look into. So he did the same, and as he worked, slowly and laboriously, he let his mind go blank and turned from Sam Hawthorne, U.S. Army, into a simple Indian peasant.
The cloth he wrapped around his fingers until it was twisted, and one end he set at the middle of his forehead. Still holding the end in place on his forehead with his left hand, Sam used his right hand to twirl the cloth and wind it around his head in larger and larger circles. The last bit he tucked into the side, above his right ear. The turban, so wrapped, left a circle of emptiness on the top of his head, where his hair shone black and shining. Sam smoothed down the shine with some talcum powder, and then spread some powder over his eyebrows and the stubble on his face. He did not need to worry about the color of his face or his hands; he had a farmer’s tan from Burma, but his legs and his feet were still sickly pale from having been encased in pants and damp and mildewed socks. He reached into his holdall again and brought out a compact of dull brown powder that had come from the United States—there was no brown makeup powder to be found in India, only white. He broke the compact powder into little pieces, and went to the bathroom to make a sludgy mess in his hand with some water. This he rubbed over his legs and his feet. The water would soon dry and the powder would fall off, but by then Sam hoped the dust outside would muddy his legs.
There were a pair of worn leather chappals also in his holdall; Sam took these out and slipped them on his feet, and then slipped them off again. If he truly was to be unnoticeable, he had to be barefoot, as Indian peasants and gardeners and coolies often were. Why, even Sayyid, butler in the house of the political agent, for all of his uniform finery of a white jacket studded with brass buttons, red cummerbund, and red turban, had had no slippers on his feet when he led Sam to this room.
Sam opened the door to the balcony and paused at the threshold, listening. But it was an afternoon quiet that hung over Raman’s house. The gardens below and behind the house were deserted, the servants in a deep slumber, the sun beat down upon them all, victorious at having driven all living beings, human and animal, indoors.
He went along the length of the balcony softly, down the spiral concrete stairs to the gardens, and walked along its length to the back where there was a little iron gate set in the concrete wall. Sam opened this gate and held his breath, but the hinges did not creak. Before he closed it behind him, he took a rusty spade from where it leaned against the wall, set it upon his shoulders, and started along the back of Raman’s house toward the cantonment area and the grounds of the Rudrakot Rifles. To the beginning. Where his brother was first lost.
As Sam wended his way through the scrub and bush behind the houses and then, with an eye on the sun, bore northwest behind the Civil Lines, the day wore on in the field punishment center, still and onerous, bearing the weight of a summer holding its breath in anticipation of the rains. Heat mirages shimmied across the desert, drawing distorted images along the horizon—the blue of water, the green of palms, the slow sway of a camel caravan—none of which existed, of course, in the arid emptiness of this dismal earth.
The sun burned, unforgiving and harsh, over a squat building of red sandstone. It was built in a square, with a courtyard in the center, and cells fronting this yard without the cover of verandahs. The cells were tiny, six feet by six feet, the floors bare and filthy, a hole in ground at the far end for a latrine, their every corner visible, like pens for caged animals on display. There was a well in the courtyard surrounded by a low brick wall, covered with wooden shutters. A silent, struggling row of men knelt in the hot sun, their heads bare and drenched in sweat.
“Again,” the guard said, and he flipped the box of matches into the air.
One man watched the matches twirl and fall into the dust, and cringed as the sun hit his eyes and scorched his face. He bent from his knees, and scrambled slowly in the red mud with his fingers, blowing on each match as he picked it up, and then rubbing it against his dirty shirt before he slid it carefully into the box. He counted in his mind…one…two…three…four…as the matches stacked up inside the little box. His fingers were raw with blood from a lashing across his knuckles the last time he had lost a match. The box held forty-five matches. Forty-five. Michael Ridley had lost count again. His brain was too tired for even this simple math, starved of food, famished for rest. He had even lost count of how many days he had been here. Months? Maybe a year? He had no idea where he was. In the two months Mike had spent at the Rifles barracks, he had seen no building like this prison, or nothing that looked like this on the inside. What it was camouflaged to be on the outside, Mike had no idea.
He had woken one night to a fist jammed into his mouth, and before he could struggle, his hands and feet were tied, his mouth gagged, a blanket draped over his head. A horse had borne him here; he had been flung over the saddle, his face smothered in the thick of the blanket, thudding against the horse’s belly. His own stomach and ribs had been banged raw by the riding, and when his feet and hands had been untied, blood had strung its way painfully into his veins again. In the beginning, so long ago, Mike had demanded a trial, asked for one, begged and pleaded, ducking his head from the careless, swinging wallops from the guards’ lathis. The guards had taken away his food, taken away his water, taken away everything but his will to live. Once also, the iron gates in the middle of one of the walls had swung open during the day to let in the water lorry (it mostly opened at night) and they had all leaned their heads hard against the bars, twisted their necks, thrown their visions to the outside, to that world beyond. But a burl of cinnamon mud in the maw of the sky was all they had seen. Brown and blue. A tree in the very far distance like an opalescent pale mushroom. The heat haze lifted then and something else, a building, a monument, came into almost sharp focus for Mike. But it then disappeared so quietly in front of him that he could no longer capture its image in his exhausted mind. What had it been? A temple? Surely he had seen it before?
Forty-four. Only forty-four matches, Mike thought. He dug through the dirt again, praying, oh God, let me find the last one, oh God, please God. The dust rose to choke him, fill his nostrils, burn his eyes, but he kept looking.
“Time’s up, chaps, hold up your boxes.”
The guard went past the line of prisoners, counting the matches in each box, until he came to Mike. “Didn’t find them all, did yer?”
Every interminable day had been like this one, with games and tasks that had once seemed stupid, when his brain could still reason so, but no longer. There was always the hope that if he counted all of his matches right, they would let him go beyond the iron gates of the entrance, that that would be the reward. His brain had tricked him into thinking so, had made an enemy of logic. Mike bowed his head, waiting for a blow…something…some punishment. His knees burned in the hot dirt. Anger came roiling over him all of a sudden. Where was Sam? Why had his mother not tried to find him? He hadn’t written to them in months, and letters went astray because of the war, but did they not wonder, or care? Where was Sam? At some European war front—a beribboned and decorated officer?
He hunched into his chest, sobbing softly, his mouth parched and open to the salt of his tears. The pot went spinning into the well, thwacked into the water, gurgled with fullness, and came swinging up the pulley. He closed his eyes as the guard flung water at the men who had found all of their matches, and heard their thirsty slurping as the drops came their way. A drop splattered near his knee and kicked up dust. With the sun beating down upon him, Michael Ridley felt a blessed coolness. He still cried, still tasted his tears, absorbed that moisture back into his body and listened for the next soft drop of water in the dirt.
Six
BRITAIN THE CRADLE OF DEMOCRACY. Although you’ll read in the papers about “lords” and “sirs,” England is stil
l one of the great democracies and the cradle of many American liberties…the British enjoy a practical, working twentieth century democracy which is…flexible and sensitive to the will of the people…
—War Department, Instructions for American
Servicemen in Britain, 1942
And by now, my dear Olivia, you have met a few of the main players in this stage I have created for you. But as you will see, the setting also matters. Mila lives in one part of Rudrakot—the elite part. Toward the reaches of the desert, away from the civil and cantonment lines of the city is—in the parlance of the British Raj—the black town. In other words, only the natives inhabited this part of the land, linked to the cantonment by a bazaar street. Mila and her family were also “native,” of course, but they were one of the few, privileged families to find their residences situated within the Civil Lines of Rudrakot. Times were, my dearest Olivia, when even this little invasion would not have been possible. But it was 1942, and there were now more Indians in the civil service, more Indians with wealth and power, more Indians demanding freedom from British rule. The encroachment into the once-inviolable Civil Lines was inevitable. For all her entitlements, Mila never forgot that she was Indian—different in skin, understanding, and disposition from most other people in her neighborhood or at the Victoria Club.
I say this because here is your father, Sam, tumbling headlong and rashly in love with your mother. And here is Mila, her equanimity already shaken by him (though she does not know it yet). For the first time in her life, a man who is not Indian has stirred an interest within her. For the first time also, she is considering Sam in the light of a lover, of a love that would last her for the rest of her life.
The Splendor of Silence Page 9